The Feminization of American Culture: Ann Douglas: 9780374525583: Amazon.com: Books

[alice wellintown]

And, there in the opening chapter of TN we have, what in The Pat Hobby
Stories will make for a play within a play within a plot within a plot in a
Hollywood movie lot, and the kind of plotting Pynchon will play with, as
writers morph into film makers and the lots they live in as made for
movies, and tv, as the lives or characters they play or take their roles
from. So Rosemary on the beach, not working, is called into a plot. What
plot?

On Tuesday, October 2, 2012, alice wellintown wrote:

>
> Suppose we apply that book, How to Read Novels Like a Professor to TN, the
> first passage, the opening, so argues our prof, is worth a second, close
> reading. And, of course, TN confirms this. The girl, the description of the
> girl, so tender, so just on the cusp of perfect beauty, not too young, just
> old enough, next to the fading flower, her mother, now she springs, she is
> a dancer, out of the hotel that merges with the sea under the high sun, the
> sun that clips close her shadow, it is too bright to see. What has
> Fitzgerald done?
>
> And, as earlier we've peeped in on an early bather, when the sun was only
> rising, we now visit the beach, a boy of 12 flashes by, rosemary now, in
> the water, the hairy man drinks...sharks, dark skin and light skin sit
> apart....
>
> And here, the poetry, not quite as tender as that Fitzgerald uses to
> describe the girl in the water; how it tenderly pulled her down out of the
> heat.
>
> Yes, TN passes the opening lines test with tender colors!
>
> On Tuesday, October 2, 2012, wrote:
>
>> I like Fitzgerald- but then I'm partial to Keats. Two scenes stand out
>> for me from the otherwise wonderfully masochistic
>> deconstruction of Dick Diver in Tender is the Night:
>>
>> the scene in Switzerland  from the balustrade, looking out into the
>> visto- It might have been something like this:
>>
>>
>> http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/da/Lauterbrunnental_train.jpg
>>
>> where the space is suddenly transected by filamentous tendrils of
>> lightening. It reminded me of GR, when Slothrop is on the lamb, either
>> in Geneva or Zurich, I can't remember which, and the narrator remarks
>> on how this Swiss venue is a magnet for genius: Joyce, Einstein... He
>> could have listed others- Shelly, Jung, & etc.,  just something about
>> the place.
>>
>> And such a wonderful contrast- the cerebral north with the warm, mellow
>> Riviera, and the dinner tables floating into the night.
>>
>> Then there is another- quirky scene- where Dick is taken to a "parlor"
>> of sorts, and clearly the people there are smoking hemp, and suddenly
>> everything is very futuristic, not at all weighed down by The
>> Depression, despite  the impending horror of WW II. Very Mod.
>>
>> It's not hard to see (and feel) the Fitzgeraldean influence on Pynchon,
>> and that without even mentioning the intro to "Been Down So Long...."
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Kai Frederik Lorentzen <lorentzen at hotmail.de>
>> To: malignd <malignd at aol.com>; pynchon-l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>> Sent: Mon, Oct 1, 2012 1:21 pm...
>> Subject: Re: The Feminization of American Culture: Ann Douglas:
>> 9780374525583: Amazon.com: Books
>>
>>
>>
>> > Gatsby is a marvel, but it's one small book.
>>
>> While Gatsby always appeared symbolically overloaded to me - "the green
>> light at the end of the pier" and everything -, I consider Tender is
>> the Night to be one of the best American novels ever. Fitzgerald's
>> skills do better unfold on the long distance. The rhythm, the
>> experience of time. Here the author treats some of his basic themes
>> like love, addiction and psychosis more convincingly than anywhere else
>> in his work. And the book really breathes the Mediterranean aroma.
>> Although I read the novel carefully several times, I still don't know
>> how Fitzgerald manages to evoke that positive feeling in the reader
>> (the tenderness the title mentions) until the very end despite
>> everything - the second water-ski scene is simply heartbreaking -
>> falling into pieces. It's really magic (I know no other word here).
>> Together with Gravity's Rainbow and Moby Dick it's my favorite American
>> novel.
>>
>> What is it that you don't like about it?
>>
>> On 01.10.2012 00:15, malignd at aol.com wrote:
>>
>> It's Faulkner for the 20th century; for the first half, in a rout.
>>  Hemingway wrote great stories (so did Faulkner) but only one great
>> novel, and that was his first.  Try to read Across the River and
>> Through the Trees without laughing.  Gatsby is a marvel, but it's one
>> small book. Kerouac?  Please ....
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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